I think it would be very useful for the "Show attackable hexagons" feature to be an option! It would be useful mind you to allow the colours to be easily changed to any values, rather than just a few preset themes. I do like the classic style colours, but find in all of the three versions of these in the beta, the colours are just a little too samey between the yellow and the light brown.

Other minor issues I have is that the volume of some of the sounds (the burning building sound particular) seem to be VERY loud. In fact, a quick inspection of the sound in a wave editor seems to show huge amounts of clipping, it's that loud!

Last but not least, I would appreciate a way of being able to stretch the view a bit. The hexagons do look decidedly squashed from a vertical point of view to me.

Not trying to be too negative mind you, I do like the new graphics and sounds generally speaking, plus the AI improvements are also very nice indeed! Overall, it's good to see Slay being given a real 2010+ makeover.

And a quick bug. Locking and unlocking your computer (tested with Windows XP) causes Slay to effectively crash and require restarting. Which is a pity for someone that plays it occasionally during quiet periods at work!

I think the bug where you lock and unlock your computer is probably the same as when a laptop hibernates and then wakes up again. DirectX "loses the device" and I haven't figured out how to recover from that yet. If you close the app and then re-open it you'll be back where you left off though.

I've played enough games now that I can give reasonably accurate comments about the AI. It is still the old AI, just added the ability to cut off players. In other words, it is fairly easy to beat all islands I've played so far.

The good points:
Castles are much more useful now.
Play is a bit trickier since you have to watch for cuts

The bad points:
The AI does not protect itself from cuts
It will ALWAYS choose to cut if it can
It is far more predictable now because of the predilection to cut

There are still very obvious existing weaknesses
The AI does not know how to properly attack castles.
It does not position men for maximum protection in some situations
It always tries to take a man if it can, even when doing so leaves it vulnerable. You can "bait" them into moving.

If you would like, we could have a skype call one day and talk about possible ways to change the AI.

I have a suggestion for the problem with being difficult to read the number of days an island has been beaten in. Try switching the name of the island with the number of days. In other words, put the island name on top and days on bottom. Yellow and green give pretty good contrast so it should work.

Request for latest version.
The end turn warning about unused players is nice. But is annoying when you have a guy that couldn't possibly move because there is no land for him to move to. Could you add a bit that if there is no available position to move to and not enough to afford an upgrade that it doesn't count toward that warning.

Sean, I played Qoni and at some point saved the game. I then completed it and won and quit out of slay. When I started slay up again, it automatically presented the unfinished version of Qoni for me to play. It should have presented the menu of games and allowed me to decide if I wanted to open an unfinished game or start a new game.

Qilk is a ferocious island to play. I found 1 and only one way to win. The first 3 moves are absolutely critical on this island.

I have an idea that might be a significant improvement in the way you pick up and manage men in the slay beta version. Please put some serious thought into doing this, I think you will really like the results. The change is simple. When a player is taking his turn and rolls over one of his own men on the island, immediately pick him up, then if the player left clicks, keep him selected and allow him to be moved. This would improve the process of picking up and moving men immensely. The player would be able to see which man he was selecting before clicking.

This should be in the category of miscellaneous bug. I opened an occurrence of slaybeta, played a game and won. Then I opened another occurrence of slaybeta and played the same game and won and closed that occurrence. Then I closed the first version of slaybeta. When I re-opened the game, the days to win was from the first game, not the second which had been won several days sooner.

I've finally got the networking code working so the latest beta version lets you play network games! There's a permanent server to connect to (and games start as soon as one person connects - you don't have to wait for a second player to connect like in the current full version)

You can also set up your own server or even "permanent server" (where you don't play in the game yourself) but you must do port forwarding from your router to your computer on port 5873

Other improvements:

- I've drawn the 'number of days won in' in a more purply colour so hopefully that's more easy to see
- Hopefully I've fixed the bug where the 'number of days won in' got corrupted
- It shows the number of times you've lost on an island if there's a gravestone showing
- "Show attackable hexagons" is an option now
- it highlights which hexagon your mouse is over to make it easy to see who you're going to pick up
- you can see what each of the men types will cost in a new option on the graph pane
- there are buttons on the score screen so you can start a game or toggle the sound from there too

Just noticed an issue with Beta 19. If you start a friendly game and select less than 6 players, the game calculates the starting funds for the players differently. The starting funds for the territories are less, depending on how many players there are in the game.

This does cause problems when you play a small map and deliberately select less players as some of the first players literally cannot place anyone for several goes - whereas players that are towards the end of the list get an unfair advantage due to their larger territories. A good example is to play "Tetraeder" with 3 players and you see the problem!

- I've fixed a bug which could sometimes make it harder to pick up your men on a network game (they'd drop back down straight away)
- You can select the volume level for sounds now, rather than just have them on or off

I've completed all the islands on Very Clever (screen shots available but not online for embedding). The new AI is a welcome change although as fusion power noted, it doesn't protect itself well. (But some of its attacks were certainly unexpected.)

I had a bug to report with an earlier beta but haven't seen it since 19 (problem was computer's knights would disappear but didn't die; OR game just didn't display the gravestones). It was a very rare and unusual condition but I'll go back and try to recreate for you. (I never realize it occurred until after that move; then it is too late to capture prior screen to make it evident.)

As for network game, two issues: 1) it restarts a new game too soon when one is finished, not able to savor victory (or disconnect before game starts); 2) there is a latency on movements that wasn't there in past versions that is just enough to be irritating.

As all others have said, thanks for the great game (although I waste WAY too much time with it). One minor request: on friendly game, can you let human pick the player rather than random? I like to pick a player position but only start from one of the territories (to increase difficulty) and so I have to restart the game multiple times until the desired player is the one I want.

I've played over 2/3 of the islands on the beta version. There are two significant flaws. The first is that the AI does not protect itself at all and the second is related that the AI does not use castles appropriately. Just for an interesting aside, jaubr was one of the more difficult islands. It couild be beaten very easily in 25 to 30 days. I wanted to do much better and eventually found a starting setup that resulted in a 16 day win. Nouss is another level that is very difficult to beat, but with judicious use of castles, it can be done.

Sean, I know the AI has to be a balancing act deciding when to cut and when to protect, but it would be nice if you would make it just a bit more defensive.